A Lady in London

I don’t usually spend my free time in cemeteries. It’s not that I have anything in particular against gravestones or funerary urns. It’s just…well…it’s just that they creep me out a little bit.

On Sunday, however, I made an exception. Braving the frigid London cold, my boyfriend and I took a post-lunch stroll across Hampstead Heath into Highgate.

As we wandered up the hill towards Highgate village, we came across the entrance to the local cemetery. Usually when this kind of thing happens, I keep walking. But Highghate Cemetery is a rare exception. Like Paris’ Pere Lachaise or Prague’s Olsany, Highgate Cemetery is the place to be. Dead, that is.

And the English know it. In fact, they know it so well that they charge visitors 3 GBP just to get in—living visitors, that is. I’m sure they charge the dead a lot more than that. And that doesn’t even grant one full access to the cemetery. No, if you want to see the really famous tombs, you have to take a guided tour.

Having heard about Highgate Cemetery in the past and being slightly embarrassed about living so close without ever visiting, my boyfriend and I hopped into the queue for our chance to peruse the mausoleums of the rich and famous. And socialist.

That’s right, Highgate Cemetery is home to what is left of Karl Marx. His massive monolith of a tombstone—complete with a granite sculpture of his head that could kill any bourgeois capitalist in a hot revolutionary minute—was both impressive and unmissable. It also made him look a bit like Santa Claus.

Further down the path we came across rows of stones so old the writing had faded. Behind them lay stones that were set back in the woods amongst decaying foliage and thick tree branches. The recent snow having melted away, the stones rose up out of inches-deep water that gave the place somewhat of a swampy feel.

Moving on, I started to notice a pattern amongst the headstones. It led me to believe that there must be a catalogue from which people can choose a marker for their grave. The most popular stone from the fall 1946 season seemed to be a granite cross with cold gray lilies adorning the rock.

But not all of the stones were so blase. A little further down the path we came across a unique marker in blueish marble. Its engraving was simple, yet effective. It read: DEAD. It was nice to see that some English people retain their sense of humor even after death.

As we walked back towards the entrance, we noticed an increasing number of stones with peoples’ greatest life accomplishments carved into them. We learned of one dead man’s membership in several government commissions, another’s inclusion in an exclusive London member’s club, and yet another’s passion for ceramics.

It made me laugh a bit to think about whether it was the people within the graves that requested such things to be immortalized with their remains, or if it was their grieving relatives that wanted the world to know how accomplished they were. My boyfriend promptly informed me that his headstone would read “He Let Jesus Take the Wheel.” I hope he’s not going to request to be buried in a church cemetery.

Our journey came to an end with a rather bizarre stone that had a giant granite dog sculpture sitting atop it. With no canine reference on the grave marker, I’m not sure if it was a ploy to scare off potential grave robbers or if possibly the dog was interred with its owner. Or maybe it was just something the family did to help them spot their loved one’s grave in the sea of catalogue-bought lily-covered crosses. Either way, I liked the dog.

As we made our exit from Highgate Cemetery, I couldn’t help but feel a bit relieved to escape the rather gray world of death and be back in the more hopeful world of the living. The cold persisted beyond the gates of the cemetery, but as we walked back through the heath, the budding crocuses reminded us that spring was coming and new life would soon emerge from the necrotic ground of London.